Where the nobel prize goes is an interesting question. let's say that some robot discovers an important discovery , that deserves the nobel. let's also say the methods of operation of the robot are standard practice at the time of building it. and the discovery came through luck and tons of robotic work. who should win the nobel? would the robot be considered by the nobel comity ?

That was the question posed by Hawking back in 2003(?). His assertion was that the device would have to be considered intelligent, albeit another form of intelligence, and possibly deserving of rights.

It does seem as though we're getting there.

The classic philosopher's version of this is the Chinese Room: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

My naive understanding is that the intelligence is not in the room or the book, but in the person who wrote the book.

With the caveat that opposing answers sound obvious to different people, this answer sounded obvious to me when I heard it: The entire system, as a whole, is intelligent; the separate components are not. Like Vizzini, Searle has made an error common even among the intelligent, and overlooked an important possible combination of location.

What? No. This has nothing to do with the Chinese Room argument. The Chinese Room argument is about refuting the claim that reasoning according to rules can ever be considered intelligence (i.e. refuting Strong AI).

My naive interpretation is that both of these situations involve assigning "intelligence" to a machine or system built by a human w/o said human's continued intervention.

I'm thinking about the systems, not the rules within the systems. If the "official" philosophy line is that it's all about those rules, well maybe that's why official philosophy is so damn confusing.

I just finished reading "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins, let me recommend that as a really well written and lucid explanation of the meaning of intelligence. If Numenta can build systems that can replicate what a 2 year old can do given a 2 year old's memory and sensory capabilities, I'll be ready to say that Jeff's explanation wins, and that philosophers better find something else that's impossible to prove or disprove (like the existence of God) to go argue about.

We seem to be less than 3 years behind schedule on the Kurzweil timeline. Everything he predicted for 2010 is either here right now or is just around the corner. One of major 'misses' was real-time translations of voice phonecalls, and both Microsoft and Google are launching this service very soon.